How I Got Vanity URL from Google Plus

I’m a user experience designer, and I specifically focus on user onboarding, spend time with real users to gather some qualitative research, write UX copy that’s intuitive and readable by human, test product hypotheses with minimum effort, act as a common bridge in between design & development, write user stories than product features, pull down data from multiple channels to measure its output and convert them into actionable insights to improve ROI.

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The minimum to get a custom URL, you need to have 10 or more followers, your G+ account should be 30 days old & your profile should have a photograph. Do you think it is easy enough to get Custom URLs for those Google plus users having more than thousand followers and so on? Absolute not! Today, I am going to tell you how I got my Custom URL from Google.

I ignored to claim when Google prompted “you are eligible for a custom URL” in the month of october, 2013. I didn’t care much about the URL thing in the first place and who cares about the Vanity URL anyway, right! I was wrong after reading a couple of related articles.

So what is Google+ Custom URL?

Custom URL is a personalized URL just like your Name. By default, Google+ profile URL has 21 digit numbers after the initial URL of www.plus.google.com, and that’s your Google+ ID. It’s difficult to remember those 21 digit numbers especially when you share your Google+ Profile with someone via Text message, What’sApp or even via Facebook Messenger. As a quick solution, you can either bookmark your Profile URL or Save them via Notes.

Benefits of Vanity URL

By using a Custom URL, you can have the following benefits.

Short URL like google.com/+Nike

It’s branded for your promotion

People can search you via Google

Easy to Share & Use

It looks professional

But, something went wrong in my case…

Last month I wanted to get rid of those long string of numbers from my GooglePlus URL such as https://plus.google.com/106997795976615382555 into https://plus.google.com/+AbinashMohanty as a Vanity URL.

Unluckily, I couldn’t able to claim my own vanity url. Google showed me the following error message…

“Many people have the same name. Add a few extra letters or numbers to this URL to get one that is unique for you.”

Well, this “/+AbinashMohanty” is a unique name and I didn’t want this to read as “/+AbinashMohanty81” or “/+AbinashMohantyDesign” either. I was not alone after reading the entire GooglePlus Post conversations via Google+Help.

I couldn’t do anything at this particular moment.

Google+ Communities are great for such discussions.

I thought of posting this Custom URL issue on Google+Help Community to get several opinions from others, and why not?

One of the best answers I have received by +Mark Traphagen was “A common question, and there is currently no known answer. It appears to me that for each common name, Google reserved it in advance for one particular user (they told me chosen by a “heuristic” that they, of course, won’t reveal) and that even if that user never claims his URL, there is currently no way to take it from him/her.”

Another suggestion by +Kaleh Kohler as he explained “Would encourage you to not accept any offer that you are not satisfied with, as there is no way to change it or remove it, at this time. Some users have reported that if they just wait they are later offered the name without having to add the extra letters.”

Did I get what I was looking for? Of course not!

I had 2 things in mind after going through all such conversations and suggestions.

Keep the existing URL.

Get a Custom URL, if possible.

I skipped No.1 and tried to concentrate on No.2.

Solution: Posting via Google+Feedback

Finally, I wrote the following points having screenshots and sent over via Google+Feedback.

“If my GooglePlus data is more than what is being asked as minimum requirements by Google for Custom URL then why can’t I have my Custom Vanity URL?”

“I don’t understand why it shows ‘Many people have the same name’ when the URL ends up with a 404 not found page.”

“This is quite surprising from Google on this particular module to see no other links to claim your custom url than the only Terms & Service link.”

You know what! I got the following email from Google+ team within 2 hours saying…

“You’re now eligible for a unique Google+ custom URL that lets you easily point folks to your profile (no more long URLs!). Here’s what we’ve reserved for you: google.com/+AbinashMohanty,” and guess what!

Thats’s how I got my Vanity URL.

Something to Learn!

I found that It’s a common problem especially with designers when they come up with a special brand name for their company/firm, work on the identity and design rest of the promotional materials, they suffer a lot when the name of the web domain is unavailable and try to register with similar or extended names.

If you care about your profile name, brand name then you should better claim your Vanity URL first than anything else.

I’m a user experience designer, and I specifically focus on user onboarding, spend time with real users to gather some qualitative research, write UX copy that’s intuitive and readable by human, test product hypotheses with minimum effort, act as a common bridge in between design & development, write user stories than product features, pull down data from multiple channels to measure its output and convert them into actionable insights to improve ROI.

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18 Comments

Good day! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering which blog
platform are you using for this website? I’m getting sick and tired of WordPress because I’ve had problems with hackers and I’m looking at alternatives for another
platform. I would be great if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.

hehe! It’s WordPress. My site was hacked in the past, but I got it reinstalled after taking a lot of precautions from the experts. The best part of WordPress is that it is versatile, you can make modify the theme, colors, typography, etc. However, you have to install some plugins before playing with it. Install iThemesSecurity first, you need add some script into your .htaccess file and protect your admin folder. Just google it 🙂

I was wondering if you ever considered changing the page layout of your site?
Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with
it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or
two images. Maybe you could space it out better?

Well there are so many images. In fact I do include multiple images per post rather than just one featured image unlike others, and that’s why it takes more time to compile, edit, proofread to publish such articles. Do you have any other questions regarding this article!

I see a lot of interesting content on your page.
You have to spend a lot of time writing, i know how to save you
a lot of time, there is a tool that creates unique, google friendly posts in couple of seconds, just type in google – laranita’s
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Hi Benjamin,
I posted on google plus help communities as mentioned here in this article. Then used the google plus feedback link (bottom of your google plus sidebar), and resent my queries followed by the posted link url, which was submitted on google plus help comminity. I hope this would help!